Tag Archives: cherry blossom

Loching around and cherry picking

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The sometimes beautiful tale of two hard-serving forward-deployed DDGs this week, waving the flag in far off ports.:

FASLANE, Scotland (March 31, 2019) The Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Porter (DDG 78) departs Faslane, Scotland, to participate in exercise Joint Warrior 19-1. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Fred Gray IV/Released)

Porter, named for War of 1812 hero Commodore David Porter, and his son, Civil War Adm. David Dixon Porter, was built at Pascagoula and commissioned 20 March 1999. As such, the Flight II Burke doesn’t look bad for 20 years considering she has mixed it up with the Russians in the Black Sea, fired Tomahawks into Syria and survived a collision in 2012 with an oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz. She is one of four DDGs assigned to Rota as part of the 6th Fleet.

Located on Gare Loch, Faslane is home to HM Naval Base, Clyde, home to the RN’s Trident fleet as well as the bulk of the country’s subs and minehunters.

YOKOSUKA, Japan (April 4, 2019) The Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Stethem (DDG 63) is moored at Fleet Activities (FLEACT) Yokosuka (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Tyler R. Fraser/Released)

YOKOSUKA, Japan (April 4, 2019) The Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Stethem (DDG 63) is moored at Fleet Activities (FLEACT) Yokosuka (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Tyler R. Fraser/Released)

Stethem, named for SW2 Robert Stethem, the Seabee diver killed by terrorists onboard TWA 847 in 1985, was also built an Ingalls while I worked there (and may or may not have my initials welded in her inner bottom somewhere). This early Flight I Burke commissioned 21 October 1995 and has seen lots of deployments in her 24-years of service. She is homeported in Japan, where the cherry blossoms (Sakura) are breathtaking this time of year.

As a side note, the best Asian John Denver impersonator I ever saw was in Yokosuka.

Happy first day of Spring

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The cherry blossoms always make me swell with joy this time of year– especially after a dark winter.

“In the cherry blossom’s shade
there’s no such thing
as a stranger.”
—Kobayashi Issa

Here we have a Japan Ground Self-Defense Force Type 74 (nana-yon-shiki-sensha) main battle tank under cherry blossoms somewhere in Japan.

Designed in the late 1960s as a contemporary of the U.S. M60 and the Soviet T-62/64, about 900 Type 74s were built by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries as a replacement for Japan’s first indigenous Post-WWII tank, the Type 61, which is turn was a very M46 Patton-like design that mounted a 90mm popgun.

If it looks familiar, the Type 74 uses the hull of the German Leopard I– though with different suspension and a 10cyl MHI diesel– and equipped with a licensed Royal Ordnance L7 105mm cannon with a number of local improvements.

They have largely been relegated to second-line service since the 1990s when the very Leopard 2-ish Type 90 Kyū-maru MBT went into production and in the end will be replaced as the new Type 10 MBT, complete with a 120mm gun and nano-crystal steel modular ceramic composite armor, is fielded in greater numbers.

Though a dated design for sure, about 250 updated Type 74s remain in service and, due to the current Japanese constitution, will likely never deploy outside of the Home Islands. As such they should prove a good enough deterrent for Godzilla.